


beginnings

by gottacatchghosts (octolingkiera)



Series: thicker than ectoplasm — danny and jazz [3]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Family Fluff, First Meetings, Gen, Pre-Canon, Secret Santa, big sister jazz to the rescue, can it be meet-cute if they're just friends, dash is a jerk, except, secret slackta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 13:23:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13249116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octolingkiera/pseuds/gottacatchghosts
Summary: Danny is about to turn five when his parents load him and Jazz into the back of their family RV and leave their small home in Wisconsin for Amity Park, Illinois.maybe it's not such a bad thing.





	beginnings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Litastic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Litastic/gifts).



> merry slackmas, chin!! i know it's late now but i tried my best,
> 
> i haven't written dp in months so this was a struggle,

Danny is about to turn five when his parents load him and Jazz into the back of their family RV and leave their small home in Wisconsin for Amity Park, Illinois. He doesn’t fight very much, too young to have formed too many emotional attachments, but Jazz is seven and whip smart and has lots of friends and she hates it.

Danny doesn’t mind. He gets his own room, here, in his big new house in this big new city. He gets his own room and his mother paints it blue and his father glues glow in the dark stars on his ceiling and sticks them to the walls while Danny reads constellations out of a book as a guide.

Jazz fills her rooms with textbooks and chapter books and picture books and scrapbooks and sketchbooks and paints her walls a soft pink that she’ll eventually feel too old for but also feel too nostalgic to change. She’ll cover the walls with posters and newspaper clippings and motivational phrases that make the room feel cozier.

They fill the house with photographs and knick-knacks and form new memories within every set of walls, breathe life into the family room with laughter and arguments and good times and bad, break in the kitchen with family dinners and all-day baking sprees and midnight snacks and midday breakfasts.

The basement is for Mom and Dad. Danny and Jazz don’t go down there.

This new town they live in is big, much bigger than the one they left. It's more like a city, one that Danny and Jazz will eventually grow to love and explore, one that will eventually become the only home that matters to them.

But for now, they're four-going-on-five and seven and they only truly care for the next, oh, couple weeks into the future at most.

They move at the end of the school year, allowing Jazz to complete the year so as to not have to struggle to fit her into a new class right before it ends. It leaves them with the whole summer to adjust to their new location and gives Danny the chance to go to the same school system until he graduates—or until they move again, whichever comes first.

It takes almost two weeks for their mom to come up with the idea to take the children out and let them get some first person, hands-on experience with what Amity Park has to offer them. She takes them to a nearby park and sets them loose, telling them to enjoy themselves.

"Come back to this spot in about two hours, dears," she tells them, gesturing to the park bench decorated with some colorful graffiti beside a tall, leafy tree.

"Okay, mommy!" Jazz says, because she's responsible and always willing to listen to and follow the rules.

Their mom smiles and kisses them both on the top of the head, and turns to walk down the street. She told them beforehand that she was going to the grocery store half a block down the road. Jazz is happy that their mother trusts her enough to take care of herself and her little brother. Danny, on the other hand, is more concerned about the monkey bars.

"You heard her, Danny," Jazz says, grabbing Danny's sleeve before he can run off. "Be back here when the little hand is on the three." She points at the clock tower in the middle of the park.

Danny squints at it, trying to read the numbers. "Okay, Jazzy," he says, finally, giving her a big grin.

“I’ll be right here if you need me.” He nods, and she smiles back, lets him go, and takes a seat on the bench.

Now free to do his own thing, Danny takes off for the jungle gym on the other side of the park, excited to climb and have fun and maybe meet some kids his own age. He didn't have many friends in their old town because he didn't go to school and the other parents wouldn't let their kids talk to him when they went to the park beside his house, but hopefully he can make some friends here!

There's a group of boys sitting on the highest bar and Danny thinks it's the coolest thing ever.

So of course, Danny wants to be up there too.

It's no easy task, climbing to the top of the jungle gym, but he's determined and he desperately wants the other boys to think he's cool so he climbs anyway, his fear fueling his desire to make it to top of the metaphorical hill.

The other boys don't notice at first, too concerned with pointing and laughing at someone—a dark skinned boy with a bulky, brightly colored something in his hands—near the swings. It takes until Danny's over halfway to the top for a dark-haired boy to turn and look down at him.

"Hey look Dash! This baby thinks he can join us up here!" the boy says, nose crinkled up as he looks at Danny.

"Hey! Little baby! Only we're allowed to be up here!" a bigger, blond boy says, waving an arm at him as if to knock him away.

"Yeah! You're too little!" the dark-haired boy says. He laughs and the blond laughs, and Danny feels his face get hot.

"I'm s'pposed to be little! I'm four and quarter!" Danny tells them, hands clenched tight around the bars.

The boys laugh again, louder, and Danny whines a loud, "Stop it!"

"You're a baby!" the blond boy says again, slapping his knees. "Babies aren't s'pposed to be climbing the monkey bars!"

"You're not the boss'a me!" Danny tells them, climbing even higher, hand over hand, fresh determination filling him and mixing with the new feeling of spite. He'll climb all the way up if he wants to! That'll show them!

"Nooo! You can't be here! We don't want you here!" the dark-haired boy says, moving to kick at Danny as he tries to put his hand on a nearby bar. "Go away!"

"Make me!" Danny yells, strafing to the side to avoid the other boy's sneakers.

"Fine! I will!" the blond boy says, standing up on the bars. He's taller than his friend and his legs have a longer reach and easily stretch down to Danny's current position.

Before Danny can really react, the boy is shoving at his shoulders and threatening to stomp on his fingers. Danny tries to move—and, honestly, he didn't think the boy would actually hurt him—but he's too slow and the boy's foot lands on the hand highest up.

Danny lets out a shriek and pulls his hand away fast enough to overbalance. He topples backwards, losing his grip with his other hand, and falls the three or four feet to the ground.

From her place on the bench, Jazz looks up at the sound of her brother’s distress. She jumps up, seeing him on the ground, sprawled on his back, and runs towards him. “Danny!”

Danny’s trying not to cry. Big kids don’t cry. Big kids are tough. Big kids can handle getting their fingers stepped on and falling off the monkey bars. He blinks until there’s no more tears in his eyes and looks up to see Jazz standing over him, one hand reaching for him and the other wrapped tightly around the book she was reading. “I’m okay,” he says, voice wobbly.

“What happened?” she asks, crouching beside him and picking up his hand. His fingers are red and he can feel them beating, like his heart.

He uses his other hand to point up. “That boy up there stepped all over me.” The blond boy and his friend are snickering and Danny gives a hard sniff. _Big kids don’t cry_.

Jazz’s eyes narrow and she hands him her book. “What a jerk,” she says, and makes for the bars like she’s going to climb them.

“What’cha doing?” Danny asks as he sits up, wide-eyed.

“I’m going up there to tell them how awful they are!” she says, not looking back as she effortlessly scales the bars. “Go play by the swings for now.”

“Okay, Jazzy,” he says, coming to his feet. He turns and starts off for the swings, glancing backwards to track his sister’s progress.

The boy Danny saw earlier, the one holding the colorful thing, watches Danny as he gets closer, occasionally looking down at what Danny can now identify as a handheld game system. “That was cool,” the boy says as Danny sits at one of the swings, book held between his legs.

“Thanks,” Danny says, gingerly wrapping his injured hand around the rope of the swing.

“My name’s Tucker,” the boy says, offering up a smile. “Those guys on the jungle gym are Dash and Kwan. They like to play King of the Hill, ‘cept they always win because they’re so big.”

“I’m Danny.” Jazz is near the top now, and Danny’s too far away to hear her properly, but he knows she’s yelling at them, waving one hand at the boys, gesticulating wildly. “They’re jerks,” Danny says, kicking off the ground. He builds up speed until the sky flashes into his line of sight. It almost feels like flying. Danny wonders what that feels like and realizes he wants that more than anything.

“Yeah,” Tucker says, voice quiet. He turns back his game and spins his swing in a semi-circle, twisting the chain ropes up.

“Jazzy’s yellin’ at ‘em.” Danny drags his feet on the ground to come to a stop. “Still wanna make it to the top.”

“Good luck,” Tucker says, glancing up again.

The two sit in companionable silence. Danny watches as Jazz climbs back down, looking real proud of herself. She pats her hands off on her pants and as she walks in his direction, he takes the chance to look at Dash and Kwan, attempting to gauge their reactions. He can’t really tell what they’re thinking and after a second he realizes he doesn’t care and goes back to watching his sister.

“I don’t know if that helped, but I feel better,” Jazz says, stepping right up to Danny and planting a kiss on the top of his head in the same place their mom did earlier. “They looked really scared when I threatened to tell their parents they were bullying another child.”

“Wow,” Tucker breathes, looking fairly impressed. “You’re so cool.”

Jazz blushes and Danny laughs. “Thanks,” she says, “but it was really no big deal. They shouldn’t have hurt my baby brother.”

Danny hands her book back. “Does that mean I can climb the monkey bars now?”

Jazz bites her lip and looks back. “I wouldn’t try it yet. Are you okay? You fell pretty hard. Is your back fine?”

Danny squirms in his seat. “I’m okay. But my fingers hurt.”

Jazz nods. “Yeah, I bet. They’ll be okay, though. You can move them just fine.” She looks between him and Tucker—Tucker is once again completely preoccupied with his game—and nods. “I’m going back to the bench. Have fun.” She ruffles Danny’s hair and leaves again.

Danny almost wishes she’d come back. Every since the move, his family has been the only constants in his life and constants are something he’s really craving, even if he’s not entirely sure how to articulate such a feeling.

On the other hand, Danny wants to make friends and Tucker seems nice enough, so he might as well give it a shot.

“So what’cha playin’?” he asks, leaning over to peek at the screen.

Tucker’s whole face lights up in a smile. “I am _so_ glad you asked,” he says, then launches into an elaborately detailed spiel about a game where you capture and collect little monsters that can fit in your pocket. Danny has to ask him to stop and explain something every so often, but Tucker’s right. He’s glad he asked.

Maybe this friend thing isn’t so hard after all.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are appreciated!


End file.
